Just now, on this blog, I noticed an ad for an "online reputation management service". There are ads for services like these all over the place (including on the airwaves of the big San Francisco public radio station, although they don't call them "ads" because public radio isn't supposed to have ads).

Anyway, I hadn't really given much thought to these businesses. I figured it was mostly for restaurants or similar kinds of clients trying to "accentuate" their good online reviews (while eliminating the negative ones, or at least pushing them down in the search results). Kind of slimy, but in a way I've come to expect from companies trying to attract me as a customer.

But I have come to learn lately that cheating scientists sanctioned by the ORI have been hiring online reputation managers to try to push the cyber-trails of their cheating out of sight. It's even possible (although not conclusively established by any means) that especially vigorous online reputation managers for hire might be engaging in shenanigans to use false DMCA claims to literally eliminate negative information that the scientific community (and indeed, the larger public) has an interest in being able to access.

So, yeah. Everyone has bills to pay -- people who work in online reputation management, people who had to leave science because they got caught cheating, blog networks like Scientopia. Commerce marches on. But that doesn't mean I have to like all of what happens in the service of paying those bills.

I actually think the plagiarism checker isn't such a bad thing. Students often take a while to learn what constitutes plagiarism vs. citation/paraphrasing, and resources to help them understand that aren't necessarily nefarious.